Candescent
by unostalgic
Summary: What happens under the cover stays undercover. Because when dawn cracks the sky, it's hard to hold her hand. [Post-pool break-in.]


a/n: This game is light and life and everything wonderful. I'm going a bit stir crazy waiting for _Dark Room_ no joke, but in the meantime, I've written this little mess of what went down after the pool-break in. At least in my head anyway.

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 **CANDESCENT**

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"We are so invisible, Max." Chloe repeats when they're in the car. They must have cheated three red lights and she floors the accelerator each time. There's nothing quite like late-night hell-raising, earth-shaking, trouble-making with her.

The smell of chlorine is stuck to them. The grumble of car exhaust fades to white noise as there's no chasing two avant-gardes into a night that swallows them whole. Maybe skinny-dipping isn't controversial enough a crime to get caught by security for anymore. Hopefully they're daft fuckers like David, or they're used to it by now.

"Fuck, Chloe." Max murmurs.

"What?" Chloe replies. She's got one hand on the steering wheel, letting her fingers get caught and drag with the open air.

"Just ease my conscience a bit - there's no way we're getting caught, is there?"

"Relax. We didn't take shit. We left Wells' armchair in its place. We left the money in the drawer."

She's reminded of her power and its potency. "Right, yeah. Everything's still in its place."

Chloe grins deviously, "That was hella slick though. That ninja move you pulled getting us into the office, no key, no pipe-bomb? Max Caulfield, don't keep it from me if you're actually a member of the CIA. I won't peep."

Max feigns surprise, "Damn. You must be psychic."

"A little bit magical, yeah. I've got some Harry Potter blood in my veins."

"Obviously."

Chloe shakes her head with a chuckle. "Fuck nah. You're the magic one, Max. Magic Max."

When she smiles, her eyes crinkle into crescent moons and glimmer brighter than the one following them home. Max hadn't really noticed their colour before then. Kind of iridescent, if a blue haze can be described that way. She could go with something cliché like the ocean, or the sky on a doomed day, one of those panoramas that would turn out as a stellar photo.

The construct of Chloe screams for a flash. The pale skin, the dark bluish hues, the pointed gaze. Her chiaroscuro would be phenomenal, especially in the moonlight right now. She hits the balance right on the cusp of her cheekbone, where white porcelain drops into a shadowed hollow. Picture perfect.

"Magic Max, hm."

Chloe grins. "Yeah, I think it suits you."

"I think it makes me sound like a stripper."

Chloe's laugh erupts into the silence. "Is that a bad thing?"

"Not really." Max snorts. "It's a little sexy. A little mysterious. Also a little tacky."

"I'm so cut, Max. That was literally my gift to you. I called you magical."

"Magic Max is either a stripper or the name of a ventriloquist who tries to approach the kids as they're leaving the circus tent." Max shrugs. "But, I guess it's also a superhero identity for me, and that's pretty fucking awesome."

"Yes, sir."

Her friend holds in a laugh as they pull into the Price driveway. Chloe takes the keys out of the ignition as quietly as possible.

"Thank God we beat Dickvid home. If he'd seen the car out we'd be done."

Chloe ditches her combat boots before they go inside to avoid making the floorboards creak. Max follows suit with her beat-up chucks in hand, up the stairs to the bedroom. It smells like a collapse of laundry detergent and black coffee and cigarette smoke. Ashy and clean, but not pungent.

"We'll both fit on the bed." Chloe shrugs her shirt off onto the floor. Her collarbones are exposed in a white singlet tight to her skin. "As long as you don't kick me off the bed like you used to, we'll still be friends tomorrow morning."

"Shut up." A smile slips out of Max's face, "I grew out of that habit. I haven't shared a bed with anyone since five years ago, anyway."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Chloe starts, "How about sharing a couch, or a pool table, or the back of a cinema, or a caravan bed-"

"None of that." Max shakes her head furiously, "Plus, the back of a cinema would be so uncomfortable, Chloe. All that popcorn in your hair and sticking to your clothes."

"Max Caulfield. You're shittin' me." Chloe doesn't bother putting on a pair of pyjamas. She just sidles into a comfortable position on the mattress, resting her arm at her side. "Are you telling me you're still a pure, untainted motherfucker?"

"I'm pretty sure you can't call me both pure and a motherfucker."

"Semantics. But why not?"

"Is it that big a surprise, honestly?"

"Well, kind of." Chloe shakes her head, "I mean, I know sex isn't all it's hyped to be, especially not with high school shitstains. Have you ever thought about it?"

Max reluctantly slides into bed too, taking care not to take up a large amount of space. She keeps her arms and legs stoutly against her frame.

"Yeah, I've thought about it. But like you said, Blackwell just houses some of the seediest, most repugnant seventeen year olds on the planet-"

"-Nathan Prescott-"

"-well, him included. Not because of the hygiene either, just them being them wouldn't make me want any kind of contact."

Chloe rolls onto her back. "I get what you mean. Prospects aren't great in general. If the picking pool was wider, you'd have it easy."

Max frowns a little, only in confusion. What do you mean?"

"Like love-wise."

"Again, what do you mean?"

Chloe keeps her eye on the posters on her roof, as if her vision penetrates the tiling and she's staring at the stars above them.

"You're sweet. You're a talented photographer. You've got a pretty face. Nobody wouldn't want that in a life partner."

"Nobody," she repeats.

"Nobody," Chloe affirms.

Max feels a ripple in her chest when she hears that, but she's not exactly sure why.

"When did sex and finding a life partner become the same thing?" Max feigns her disregard, looking to the ceiling as well.

She hears Chloe grab at her ribbed beanie and pull it down over her eyes. "Fuck, sorry, they're not. It's the hour. People get sentimental at two in the morning."

Max murmurs, "Don't apologize." Because she shouldn't. Of course she's thought about them both. Sex and love aren't the same, but they overlap a lot of the time.

She doesn't really think about sex, though. She thinks too much about touch, that's why.

She's so close to Chloe's body now, even if they're both facing the ceiling. When they're sitting a meter apart in the truck, or on opposite sides of the booth at Two Whales, or walking towards the bus shelters, she forgets Chloe's not just a transient persona. She's not an illusionist who still makes every day feel surreal, candescent with adrenaline. She's not just a memory anymore, either.

Max feels the heat from her. She can sense the contours of her hips, where her fingers are drumming mutely into her leg, one ankle tucked behind the other.

She's so close. If she wants to, she can reach out and play with Chloe's fingers. Cradle them in her palm, nurse them like porcelain pieces that need to be kept together. If she wants to, she can lean over and bury her lips into the nape of neck vulnerable to the beams of starlight streaming through the window, keeping them warm. If she wants to, she can.

If it goes badly, she'll freeze the processes of time right here. Power for her own good for once, not for another. Flicker the seconds back in retrograde, wind back each moment that passes as a flutter, reverse the ingrains of history and push the clocks far into the distance. Wait for the hourglasses turn on their heads. Then she'll try again.

She can kiss her without warning if she wants to. Without being provoked. Without being dared.

If she just leans over.

The trance is broken when they both hear a series of footsteps approaching the bedroom door. Chloe silently drags the blanket up over Max's head.

"Be really fucking quiet." Chloe whispers sharply.

Her slender fingers make their way to Max's wrist, clutching it gently. Max feels her heart tighten up in its barricade, syncopating the sound of their breathing. Slow and light. Gradually, measured and silent.

The door creaks open, a silhouette comes through the frame.

"Get the fuck out, it's 2AM! Jesus Christ."

Chloe hurtles a pillow at the doorframe. David steps out quietly, raising his hand as a white flag. The door shuts noiselessly behind him.

Max carefully raises her head from beneath the sheet. Chloe hasn't released her wrist yet.

"We got lucky. Nice speeding back there."

"Yeah." Her friend rumples her blue locks, "If that fuckwit had accelerated two beats faster, things could be a lot uglier."

"He was no match for us."

"He's too slow for the fast life. His car _and_ the cog-works of his brain." Chloe chortles. "If there's enough brain up there to function."

Max tries to smile along but she can only venture a yawn. The tension that had strung her out on a wide-eyed adrenaline trip suddenly collapses and weighs down her body. It's as if she's settled back down to the ground, the inertia in her awakened when she sleeps.

Chloe chuckles and tosses her beanie to the side of the room. "Maybe the fast life is too fast for Magic Max."

"Magic Max is a superhero alias that never sleeps, like Batman. Max Caulfield is tuckered out and needs some sleep, though."

Chloe chortles. "Batman, hey?"

Max grins, "Yeah. The only hero Gotham deserves. Call me, beep me, bitch."

"Are you a universal superhero or a teenage spy with a mole rat?"

"I can be one and the same."

Chloe holds her eye for a fraction of a second before turning back to the posters on her ceiling. Her voice becomes gravelly and dark when it's at a low enough volume.

"If I call you, beep you, will you come and rescue me in my time of need?" It's a faraway comment that's directionless. It gets lost between the ceiling fan and the Milky Way above their heads, above their world.

Max knows she's kidding around, but slowly, she finds where her fingers fit between Chloe's on her wrist and squeezes her hand gently.

"Always."

Because from now on, she avows that time and space isn't an obstacle anymore. Doesn't matter if the far reaches of fate get between them, separated by seas swelling, lands shifting, hearts breaking; she'll find Chloe's hand. She'll hold it. She'll keep her safe.

She feels a pause. Then a squeeze back.

"I'm no damsel in distress." Chloe murmurs. "But, don't let me hit the ground, Max."

"I won't." Max replies, "I'll be here to catch you. And you won't feel a thing."

"You'll be here."

"I'll be here."

Sometimes the rewind isn't for righting wrongs. It's for reliving things that feel so right they should be wrong.

Chloe rolls over to face her. There's a smile in her eyes.

"Good night, Magic Max."

Her friend has closed her eyes and the smile dissipates. The moment has passed. Max wants to reach out and catch its ghost with her fingertips. But she can't grasp blindly at the intangible. It's like trying to hold the wind close to her heart, impossible.

"Magic Max never really was a superhero alias. She'll be here all along. Because you are magic, Max." Chloe murmurs.

She doesn't know that Max already looks at Chloe like she's made of magic. Of magic and madness and the psychedelia of being seventeen, bursting at the seams with pulsating energy, wild colours, light of life.

But she's made of this moment too. A sleeping girl drifting out in a dreamscape, breaths rising and falling like the beats of an even sea. Starshine making her face glow brighter than anything in the sky. Fingers tangled up together. No talking. No walking. Just being.

Max might never break into another pool after hours again. She might never need to chase the dawn down the road and around the corner. She might never do anything that requires a getaway car ever again.

And maybe tomorrow morning, when the sun cracks the sky and they can't hide beneath blankets anymore, things will have changed. They'll be lying a meter apart on the mattress. Maybe it'll be hard to hold her hand again.

But that's okay.

Because it's all the Chloe here and now, in the end. She won't rewind this moment because of the now makes the then worth remembering. There's nothing quite like late-night hell-raising, earth-shaking, trouble-making with her. But there's nothing quite like silence beside her, passing hours with her, being with her. It's because there's no one quite like her in the universe.

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a/n: These two in _Chaos Theory_ -ugh, Dontnod knows exactly what they're doing with our heartstrings. Thank you for reading again!


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